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France is fighting to save your iPhone from an early death
- jruohonen 3y agoKudos to them!
- Proven 3y ago[dead]
- kkielhofner 3y agoGenerally I support this but Apple is a strange target. Many Android devices are supported for timeframes practically measured in months. Meanwhile my iPhone 6 from 2014 still gets updates…
- josephcsible 3y agoWhen an Android device stops getting official updates, you can unlock the bootloader and install LineageOS or something to keep getting community updates indefinitely. Apple goes out of their way to keep you from being able to do that on an iOS device.
- rchowe 3y agoI think many more people are going to use the vendor-supported updates than jailbreak their device.
- Zak 3y agoUnlocking the bootloader on many Android devices is not a jailbreak; it's officially supported to varying degrees, though Google also has official support for helping apps sabotage users' ability to run them on unlocked devices so it's a bit of a mixed bag. Ultimately, it's easy and reliable enough for someone who's interested in tech and likes to tinker, but I cannot recommend it for (to use the canonical example) my mother.
- danaos 3y agoLinageOS is sadly available only on the most popular devices.
- nicoburns 3y agoTo be fair, that almost certainly include Apple devices if installing 3rd party OS's would supported. Especially as the Asahi Linux project for macs has already done a lot of the hard work.
- josephcsible 3y agohttps://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ looks like it's hundreds of devices.
- Zak 3y agoIt's hundreds of devices that have been supported at some point. It's far fewer that have official builds of the current version. The Pixel 3 line (2019) for example, doesn't have builds of LineageOS 20 (Android 13), though there are still updates for the LineageOS 19 (Android 12) builds.
- realusername 3y agoI currently have a Galaxy S5 running Android 13 in front of me and it's as snappy as a modern device just bought from the store. The camera is of course the biggest drawback but apart from that, everything is fine.
- hutzlibu 3y agoDid you say this to support parents argument? The Galaxy S5 was one of the most popular phones and I especially bought it some years ago, because LineageOS support was supposed to be good. And it did run kind of ok, but certainly not "as snappy as a modern device just bought from the store".
- realusername 3y ago
- ninth_ant 3y agoGiven that "other" marketshare is consistently measured to be less than 1% of usage observed in the wild -- and LineageOS would be a fraction of that -- I think this is safe to say is not quite relevant to actual consumer behaviour.
- realusername 3y agoYou can't force people to reuse old phones, you can only make laws to make it possible
- gavaw 3y agoOf course you can: you can tax phones until most people can't buy new ones. That's what will happen once these laws are imposed and people keep buying new phones because they don't give a fuck. 100% democratic!
- realusername 3y agoThat's kind of what is done in France as well actually, there's some subside for repairs and I'm pretty sure the money is taken from a tax on new phones. That's not too significant yet but I'm expecting the amounts to increase
- CrampusDestrus 3y ago>you can unlock the bootloader on a laughably small subset of devices >and install LineageOS or something to keep getting community updates indefinitely. false and only partially true for an even smaller subset of devices
- realusername 3y agoA lot of devices have unlockable bootloaders, including a lot of the newest flagships, that one isn't really true. For the lineageos support, you usually need to wait a bit but that's not really an issue since it's likely the manufacturer is still making updates while the device is pending support.
- nicoburns 3y agoApple's software support is pretty great, but that doesn't help you much if the hardware fails.
- ramesh31 3y ago>Apple's software support is pretty great, but that doesn't help you much if the hardware fails. Fortunately it never does. There have been some mistakes in the PC lines, but iPhone has always been rock solid from the first.
- Zak 3y agoEven assuming a defect rate of zero, Li-ion batteries wear out, and people break screens by dropping them.
- ramesh31 3y ago>Meanwhile my iPhone 6 from 2014 still gets updates… Unfortunately it's the end of the line for that era. My SE (the iPhone 6 internals) just got cut off with the iOS 16 update last fall. Sad times.
- ericpauley 3y agoFor feature updates yes. For (most) security updates no.
- alanfranz 3y agoIos 15 still gets critical security updates.
- ohgodplsno 3y agoApple is not a target, it's just Wired sensationalizing titles for views. Everyone is targeted, from gluing batteries to serialising parts.
- kaba0 3y agoWhat’s bad with gluing batteries? I prefer maximizing the capacity of my device, and having waterproofness.
- bdcravens 3y agoWhat is being discussed here isn't software. It's practices like serialization that makes repairing iPhones expensive. If your iPhone 6 needed a repair, the economics would probably drive you to a new iPhone, which is the issue.
- xenospn 3y agoI would argue that keeping parts for an iPhone 6 around (or making new ones) is a much bigger form of waste.
- realusername 3y agoProducing parts is a bigger form of waste than producing a whole new device?
- Arnt 3y agoThere's production: You have to produce a large number of parts in a production run. If you sell a small number, that's a lot of waste. And there's storage: Storing things in warehouses costs money per year. I've heard figures well above $1 per part and year. If you use half a warehouse for storing things that will eventually not be used, you're wasting that warehouse and spending money to do it.
- bdcravens 3y agoVery true, but you can literally buy new transmissions for 70 year old cars. More importantly, the issue of serialization prevents reuse of parts already in the wild, such as buying a broken phone for parts, often in an on-demand way.
- Arnt 3y agoI'll trust you on that. I've heard that it also prevents fake parts, ones made in a similar way to what you can read about at https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=1022 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=1022 Would you say that's a bigger or smaller effect than not being able to use parts from a broken phone?
- quitit 3y agoTargeting iPhones is deliberate - the changes they're against are the ones which make it hard to hack. If they were truly interested in this goal they'd be targeting devices which aren't made from recycled materials, are poorly constructed, made from environmentally harmful processes and sold cheaply to flood the market (and subsequently landfill.) I look at this cynically: Child safety is the pretext to removing encryption, yet low-hanging fruit to protect children from these harms is not enacted. Easy repairs are the pretext to removing secure hardware, as if normal people are just lining up to do at home repairs (which are already available contrary to the slant of the article, as well a simpler device construction which iFixIt themselves state as easier to repair than earlier models.)
- kibwen 3y ago> I look at this cynically The cynic would say that Apple doesn't give a damn about privacy, only about control. Locking down their devices is only a pretext to prevent competition and abolish general-purpose computing so that they can continue to enact their rent-seeking on their captive population of digital serfs.
- quitit 3y agoSorry no. Consumers arent stupid idiots: they know what they are buying and there is massive choice in the markets these devices participate. Also malware statistics don’t lie.
- kibwen 3y agoImagine being on Hacker News and arguing against user freedom. Do you realize where you are?
- shrimp_emoji 3y agoA lot of devs work for Apple (or Microsoft or TikTok or...); engineering and ethics are totally orthogonal. ;p
- surgical_fire 3y agoBut android devices are typically not hard to root and then install something on them. Apple devices become fancy paperweights over time.
- kaba0 3y agoIt is very far from trivial, plus plenty (most?) devices have no open drivers, or will wipe the proprietary firmware on root, leaving you with much worse hardware.
- kiba 3y agoI rather have a competitor outcompete them with a repairable product rather than forcing Apple to make better phones, or that Apple is forced to add repairability in order to compete. That is not to say regulation is unimportant, but that I rather that regulations tilt the playing field toward more consumer friendly companies.
- gavaw 3y agoRegulations are introduced when neither side of the contract desires the change but still the government wants to interfere.
- samrus 3y agoI believe regulations are needed when it would beneficial for all providers to collude and form a cartel, which destroys the competition neccesary for innovation
- samrus 3y agoYou don't know what a cartel is?
- kaba0 3y ago2 is a magic number on the mobile platform, capitalism is not some magic tool to solve every problem — there is not enough financial incentive to create an app for the majority of corporations for more than 2 platforms. So no new competitor can turn up, see Microsoft that is no small fish, and spent a shitton of money on it, to no avail. On the other hand, Apple is like the best player in this category with almost a decade of proper, first-class support, compared to every android device that will die in 2 years, only recently may survive the 4 your mark.
- ubermonkey 3y agoI mean, ok, but I get 3 years out of an iPhone most of the time now, and by then I'm pretty okay getting a new one because of the accumulated incremental improvements, especially with the camera.
- meristohm 3y agoOnly three years? I wouldn't have switched to this XR (2018) if a family member didn't have a good use for (and prefer the size of) my SE (2016). I still use a Samsung S3 (2012?) and laptops from ~2010. These things can last awhile, and should- they cost a lot to make, including the human cost of mining the materials. We're moving fast and breaking ourselves, and while that seems to be human nature over the millennia, maybe we have some choice in how culture develops?
- ubermonkey 3y agoAgain: the incremental improvements to the plaform are, by that point, a compelling enough reason for me to upgrade. The phones still typically work fine.
- ghaff 3y agoI usually end up on about a 3 year cadence for a similar reason and then use the n-3yr phone for a couple of secondary purposes like driving Apple Music to my stereo (at which point the prior phone's battery is probably shot and/or is otherwise not really useful any longer).
- crazygringo 3y agoNot to mention mobile devices, being mobile, are often lost or stolen or irreparably broken by the 3 year mark. Designing them to last 10 years doesn't make a ton of sense when shit happens -- being left behind in a cab or being dropped on concrete or falling into the pool or snatched when you left it briefly unattended. It's like when people wish for medical advances so we can live for a million years, not realizing you'll probably be hit by a bus long before that.
- retskrad 3y agoApple is indirectly nudging you to get rid of your older Apple products and buy their new ones. For example, let's use a high level example. When you buy an iPhone, the camera will never change. The camera features and picture quality will be the exact same on day 365 as on day 1. Apple as a company is set up to only build and focus on software for newer hardware. They don't spend one minute extra to optimize for older hardware.
- mwint 3y ago… imagine if Apple did improve the camera software. Someone would find a corner case it behaves worse in, make a YouTube video about Apple degrading cameras for planned obsolescence, and nine months later the EU has a committee to approve camera software changes.
- meghan_rain 3y ago> the EU has a committee to approve camera software changes shudder
- icehawk 3y agoNot really sure how its an "early death" when it loses software support right at the normal 5-year depreciation cycle for a computer.
- josephcsible 3y agoIn what world is 5 years normal for a computer?
- icehawk 3y agoIn the US: https://www.irs.gov/faqs/sale-or-trade-of-business-depreciation-rentals/depreciation-recapture/depreciation-recapture https://www.irs.gov/faqs/sale-or-trade-of-business-depreciat...
- josephcsible 3y agoOh, I see: you meant the time for corporate tax purposes, not the time that most people actually replace their personal computers after.
- samrus 3y agoApple land
- andromeduck 3y agoTax accountant's, presumably.
- realusername 3y agoComputers do not get a 5 year deprecation cycle at all, that's only happening in accounting.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y agoMy first and only iPhone became unusably slow with a major OS upgrade about 2 years into its life. I haven't bought an Apple product since. I don't like Google either, but I've had several Galaxy phones since then and every one has lasted until I was ready to replace it on my own schedule. My current one is 2.5 years old and feels no worse off than the day I bought it.
- andromeduck 3y agoWhich one?
- xenic 3y agoThe iPhone “I made this story up” is my guess. Certainly major software updates can break things, but that is why you can (though not always quite easily) downgrade for a while after an update.
- someotherperson 3y agoI'm willing to bet it's an iPhone 4, because I had the same experience. I switched to Android for several years after.
- andromeduck 3y agoThat's just scaling difficulty. Android was pretty shit back then too and continued to have performance degredattion due to other reasons like storge implementation unti a few years ago - idk about now.
- nordsieck 3y agoIt's not impossible if it were an early iPhone - particularly one before iPhone 5. Not really relevant to modern iPhones, but they wouldn't know that if they've sworn off iPhones since.
- 3y ago
- qingcharles 3y agoNo-one is bringing up one of the reasons for serialization of parts. Apple put security into iPhones to make them much harder to sell after they have been stolen. iCloud Activation Lock makes it very hard for a thief to resell a stolen phone, thereby making it less attractive to steal in the first place. So, the thieves that I was in jail with told me they continued to steal the phones then just took them all to the phone repair stores who would break them all down for the spare parts and give them cash. They would then use all the stolen spares to repair other people's phones. Now that the parts are serialized this channel is closed and it again makes it less attractive to steal the phones. So, I for one am OK with the serialization, BUT there needs to be a balance. I realize Apple now hands out repair tools and instructions, with a system to reserialize your authentic parts, but what to do with a mountain of half-broken phones that could be legitimately cannibalized for their working parts?
- realusername 3y agoThat's the stated reason yes, doesn't mean we have to buy into it. Every time they want more control, they say it's for "security", we're used to it now.
- devn0ll 3y agoIf Apple would supply the parts.. This would also not be a problem anymore. Besides, I'd rather that my stolen phone is useful to someone (even if not me) then thrown away by me after a year. As long as the software made sure nothing of my data is recoverable. No, I'm sorry but this tactic is nothing but anti-consumer and anti-green.
- Zak 3y agoYou seem to be saying "if stolen iPhones are worthless, iPhones will be stolen and become e-waste", but if stolen iPhones are worthless, very few people will steal iPhones. There are, of course less anti-consumer options than requiring active first-party involvement in any parts replacement. One would be keeping a registry of stolen phones and having the OS phone home after detecting a new part. Of course, that would cost Apple a bit of money (I think they can afford it) and only work with a locked-down OS (not to my taste, but I see no signs of Apple changing it), but it serves the legitimate goal of disincentivizing iPhone theft without raising the barrier to repair and creating extra e-waste.